The great gates of Edoras rose to the sky, a stark and hard contrast to the waves of rolling grass Dawn had been forced to watch for the past who-know-how-many hours. It cast a cold chill down her spine. Gandalf had warned them all as they had crested the final hill not to look for welcome at their destination. It wasn't until she was standing at the firmly barred gates that she fully comprehended his vehemence.

Shouts went up from inside the wooden pillars and, as the gate was eased open and Gandalf put forward his errand to the gate-keepers, Dawn turned in her position perched on the back of Shadowfax and let her gaze wonder back to where they had left George.

The Ent had been in no way eager to approach the city made with a domination of wood and had instead opted to 'plant roots', as he had called it, around and to the south of the city; a blind spot, Gandalf had mentioned, to the soldiers of Rohan. Dawn had offered the Ent the choice of returning to his wood. He'd taken quite a liking to her and had come so far out of his way already to see them to Edoras. But George had shaken his great leaved head.

"Ain't my wood darlin'," he had said simply, thoroughly confusing the hell out of Dawn but causing Gandalf to nod. Their parting forced Dawn to give up her travelling position up in Georges branches and she'd been riding with Gandalf, perched in front of him on the back of Shadowfax since.

At first Dawn had been uncertain about the position. If Gandalf were to feel the need to steady her with an arm about the waist, she knew there was no way her wounds would go unnoticed as they had since her arrival. But luckily, Shadowfax turned out to be a smoother ride than Giles' old sports car - at least when Giles wasn't driving it - and the Wizard seemed to be instinctively staying away from her areas of pain.

Dawn leaned forward and stroked the silver stallion's neck. She really didn't see what Legolas was on about - Shadowfax certainly wasn't a mere ass.

A call was given up and Gandalf mounted the horse behind her once more as the gates to the city were opened and the party made their way through, entering onto a rough-hewn and rock-littered street. The horses made their way slowly and almost, Dawn realized, cautiously up the slope towards the gold-hewn structure at its crown. Not that she could blame them.

"You'd find more cheer in a graveyard." Gimli's rough comment seemed to be smothered in the tension on the air and Dawn couldn't help the shiver that travelled down her spine as her eyes met Legolas'. Then again, that may not have been the welcoming.

There was certainly no denying the elf was all kinds of hotness and Dawn did have a history for crushing on anything that moved. Damnit.

Their horses were taken at the foot of a great flight of stairs that right-angled its way up to a platform of finely formed stone and a door with more guards than Ben Affleck's jock drawer. The great hall of Meadow-lea…..or Meadows-end or something along those lines. Dawn had never been good with names. As they reached the door Dawn barely had time to finish cursing the inventor of stairs before the hinges creaked and yet more guards arrived on the scene. Dawn rolled her eyes.

"We cannot let you before the King so armed, Gandalf Greyhame," an orange-haired man at the front of the procession spoke and Dawn watched as all of her companions stiffened slightly bar Gandalf who simply looked at the guard, obviously awaiting an explanation. The man's face seemed to tighten into an expression Dawn recognized clearly as one of hidden disgust as he only just kept himself from spitting his next words. "By order of…Grima Wormtongue…"

Dawn suddenly understood his expression - anyone with a name like that really couldn't be pretty. Gandalf's head lowered slightly and he nodded to his companions who started unburdening themselves of the portable armoury they seemed to have been carting around in the hot sun. It was a wonder they could move.

Dawn found herself fighting down a laugh as the poor man opting to take Gimli's weapons became increasingly stooped as axe after axe was placed into his straining arms. Her eyes swept to Legolas who also had his fair share of hidden blades - though his arsenal was decidedly more subtle than the dwarf's choices. Gandalf himself unstrapped a sword from his belt and Aragorn laid down his share of military paraphernalia. Dawn frowned as not one, but two swords were placed down with the ranger's load and couldn't help the shiver of recognition at the second blade.

"Your staff."

Dawn's head whipped around at the door-warden's words and she watched as Gandalf chuckled a little uneasily and Aragorn sent the Wizard's staff a sharp look. Oh she so knew that thing was more than what it seemed. Just as the silence was hitting suspicious levels Dawn stepped forward and, putting on her best Oliver Twist expression, looked up into the face of the door warden imploringly.

"Please Sir, we've come so far, and Mr. Gandalf isn't as young as he once was…surely you wouldn't take his only means of support?"

The door-warden looked down at her and Dawn knew what he saw. A young girl, innocent and honest, obviously downtrodden of late and simply radiating concern for a man she obviously considered her own grandfather or a close enough approximation. Dawn forced a few tears to the forefront as well, just to give her eyes that un-disappointable glassy look Buffy hated so much.

The group of men caved like a rendition of her sister's love life, many giving her sympathetic looks as they stepped aside at the door-warden's nod. Dawn nodded to them, her innocence and gratefulness shining at three-hundred watts as she turned back to her companions and very pointedly took Gandalf's arm in the crook of her own. A swift wink and a smirk up to his amused face and she turned back, her good-little-girl expression firmly back in place as she led the group into the building.

The hall was long and dark, lit only with very sparse candles set into man-sized holders of brass lined along the alcoves. Designed obviously with horses in mind, the hall, Dawn thought, would have made a noble establishment…if not currently housing some of the slimiest people Dawn had seen in a good while.

They prowled the shadows, their hair lank around their features as they watched the group make their way down the stone floor towards the dais; the only part of the structure besides the door, bathed in semi-light. Dawn allowed her eyes to flicker momentarily to the throne perched there and the figure slumped in it before she returned her attention to the danger circling them.

"The hospitality of your hall is somewhat lessened of late, Théoden King." Gandalf's voice boomed through the heavy silence and he dropped his arm from hers, obviously finding the charade to have run its course. Dawn returned her eyes to the front as a husky and rather pathetic answer struggled its way from the lips of the man slouched there.

"Why should I welcome you? Gandalf Stormcrow…"

Dawn almost rolled her eyes. What was with these people and names? Instead, she watched as a squat pile of what she'd thought was black rags turned away from the King and unfurled to become a very pale, very lanky, very greasy man. Her nose wrinkled in disgust. Grima Wormtongue she presumed?

"Late is the hour in which this conjurer chooses to appear. Lath-spell I name him, ill-news is an ill guest…"

Dawn almost winced in sympathy to Gandalf as the last of the slimy man's comments was breathed directly into the wizard's face. Judging by those teeth, it can't have been pleasant.

"Hush!" Gandalf's command rang sharply in the darkness. "Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth! I did not travel through fire and death to merely bandy words with a witless worm!"

Wormtongue's pigment-less eyes closed over in feint apprehension at the wizard's words. Then his gaze flickered over to the shadows off to the side. Dawn didn't need to look to know that the slimy guys had closed ranks.

"This isn't good." She hadn't meant to be heard and almost jumped when Legolas stepped up to her side.

"No, it is not," he spoke softly and Dawn's eyes caught in his for a moment. "Keep your wits Lady Dawn."

That was her only warning as Wormtongue's strangled cry went up from in front of them and her head whipped around to see his eyes fixated in terror on Gandalf's revealed staff.

"I told you to take the wizard's staff!"

Suddenly everything exploded into action and Dawn whirled around in time to see Legolas smash a fist into an advancing slimy guy taking him effectively out of the game. It was obvious the attackers were trying to get to Gandalf who was approaching the dais with determination, his staff held high, but they were having little success. On one side of the wizard, Gimli and Legolas took out any and all who approached their friend while Aragorn covered the other side effectively on his own.

Well, almost effectively. Dawn's eyes landed on one of the free-standing, wrought-iron candle holders.


Legolas grunted slightly as yet another of Wormtongue's men fell and spared a glance around to see how his companions were faring. Gandalf had near reached the king, unharmed as was their hope and Gimli was busy bringing yet another of the attackers down with a tackle to the knees. Legolas almost smiled as the delighted roar of the dwarf rang out over the cries of battle.

Aragorn on the other hand was not faring as well. One ruffian was proving a struggle and another had begun to approach from behind the ranger, a knife plainly in hand. Legolas stepped forward, about to yell a warning to his friend when the knife came sailing through the air, landing at his feet. He blinked; surely he had seen wrong?

But no, she was still there, the former knife-wielder lying crumpled at her feet as she swung the candelabra to the right this time and took out another of the assassins. Legolas had to grin. Who was this maiden? He sensed the approach from behind and brought his fist up sharply over his shoulder, feeling the satisfying crack of bone as the man who had charged from behind practically ran into the blow.

Across the hall, the Lady Dawn took down the last of Wormtongue's men with one fell swing and the forked-tongued manipulator himself, obviously having been caught in the chaos rolled onto his back not far from where Legolas himself stood. Gimli's foot came down hard on the king's adviser.

"I would not move if I were you," the dwarf growled. All eyes suddenly turned to the front as Gandalf addressed the king of Rohan.


As Gandalf spoke Dawn dropped one end of the heavy candelabra to the stone floor with a grunt as her hand went automatically to her side. It came away bloody and Dawn groaned. She'd broken one of her scabs when she'd twisted that last time and the recent wound was bleeding freely. Her head came up suddenly at the sound of the laughing. Low and rasping it sounded like an eighty year old smoke-a-holic's. It was coming from the lumped figure on the throne.

"You hold no power here, Gandalf the Grey…"

Dawn frowned. Grey? Gandalf suddenly swept his cloak aside revealing a glowing countenance. "I will draw you Sauroman as poison is drawn from a wound."

Dawn could only watch in horrified fascination as the king of Rohan writhed beneath the wizard's attentions. Her attention was so taken with the spectacle, she was surprised she even heard the gasp. Turning, she saw a woman in white enter the hall from the side, her eyes round as she took in the scene. Dawn moved at the same time she did, intercepting the woman before she reached the dais and the two struggling upon it. She reached out and grabbed the woman's arm, pulling her around to a halt and causing her golden hair to far out around her. The fearful gaze she turned on Dawn spoke volumes of the care the woman had for the crumpled figure on the throne and Dawn squeezed her arm in reassurance.

"Just wait…please."

She really hoped she was doing the right thing. Truth be told she knew very little of the group she'd fallen in with, though they seemed to be of the good. Both girls turned their attention back to the dais as Théoden spoke…but in a voice that clearly wasn't his.

"If I go, Théoden dies…"

Dawn's eyes narrowed at the hissed growl and she felt the woman by her side stiffen in shock.

"You did not kill me; you will not kill him!"

"Rohan is mine!"

Dawn really couldn't help it, she'd heard the same line over and over from demons that later became very dead, usually as a result of her sister. It was an old line.

And so she scoffed. Unfortunately she did so loud enough to get everyone's attention.

Everyone's eyes swung to her, including those of the thing possessing the king. For a moment his eyes simply bored into her hatefully before suddenly something within them seemed to spark. "It couldn't be…"

It was said as a whisper but was heard by all and Dawn shivered as, slowly, a knowing and malicious smile lifted the edges of the king's lips. Gandalf's gaze slid from Théoden to Dawn and back again before he shifted his staff with a swift jolt, causing the king to be thrown back into the throne.

"Be gone!" he commanded and the king, or whatever possessed him growled up at the wizard. His eyes flickered back to her the moment he sprang forward for an attack on Gandalf and in that moment Dawn knew.

He knew what she was.

The knowledge stunned her into stillness for a moment as, for the final time, Théoden King was thrown back against his throne, this time moaning. The woman in white beside her pulled out of her slack grasp and ran to the dais, catching the king a moment before he slumped to the floor.

Dawn watched in a slight stupor as the old king grew…not so old and the woman - Eowyn the king called her - was reunited with a man she obviously cared for deeply. It hardly even registered as Théoden was presented with his sword, though obviously everyone else thought it was a momentous event. The blade glinted in the light as if made of fire as the king turned it lovingly in his hand. Then his eyes became hard and no one in the room missed the fury in his stance as his eyes flicked to his royal-adviser. That was when Wormtongue, thoroughly terrified out of his wits, made his last, desperate move.

He kicked out and Gimli fell with a grunt and a growl, unable to right himself in time to stop the traitor's scramble to one of the side doors; the side door Eowyn had entered by in fact. The side door Dawn was amazingly close to. As a result, Dawn suddenly found herself being charged by a desperate and vicious looking slime ball. She wrinkled her nose and stepped back out of his way as he streaked past, only at the last possible moment raising her foot. Wormtongue sailed through the air and slammed unceremoniously into the wall. Dawn retracted the foot she'd used to trip him as she gave the glowering adviser a winning smile.

"Whoops."